Shepherds and shepherdesses painted in stories, from classical myth, through the Bible and Christ’s nativity, to epic poetry, including Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Dadd
The first of two looking at the telling of English legends in paintings: Robin Hood and his ‘Merry Men’, popular for the last 500 years.
A look back at some of my favourite articles on painters and painting, from Moreau and Salome, to Merson’s tame wolf.
In memory of Richard Dadd: ten of his best, and thoughts about his life and work. Would we have been any better towards him even now?
The decline and fall of Medea, as her sorcery is used for murder, and she kills her own infant sons. Paintings by Delacroix, Turner, and others.
In 1864, he was transferred to the newly-built Broadmoor Asylum. Despite that disruption, he continued to paint.
Domenicus van Wijnen’s paintings are radically original, quite unlike other works before him, and not matched for more than a century after. Why don’t we know him and these paintings better?
In which Dadd becomes a nineteenth-century Bosch on some seriously psychotropic drugs. It is a masterpiece like no other.
A couple of watercolours give some insight into those around him, and pose a perplexing puzzle. He ended the 1850s with another masterpiece based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He painted a series of narratives drawn from the Bible and other sources, and 32 watercolours of ‘Passions’ over this period.
